It is well known that, in recent years, electrophotographic copying apparatus have come to have a large share of the field of business machines. Although there are differences among various machines in copying speed--owing to the convenience of utilizing plain paper as copy sheets as well as low unit copy costs--transfer type electrophotographic copying apparatus have come to a position of importance in the mainstream of the business machine field.
Such copying machines have drawbacks such as the typically large size of the apparatus and, in addition, their mechanisms are generally complex. Furthermore, where it is possible to use only several kinds of transfer papers--as, for example, transfer papers of B4 size, A4 size and B5 size--drawbacks arise such as in the copying of relatively oversize design diagrams (utilization of which has been remarkably increased in recent years) of A3 size whereby it is necessary to rely on other copying machines; likewise where the size of the original to be copied is small (such as of B6 size), whereby the transfer paper is wastefully consumed.
Moreover, in the conventional copying apparatus provided with a drum-shaped sensitive member and a roller type fixing device as a settling or fixing means, it has been impossible to construct the apparatus so that the distance between the sensitive drum and a pair of rollers constituting the fixing means is shorter than the length in the moving direction of the transfer paper, and, as a result, the size of the apparatus is larger than desired.
In the present invention, the above-mentioned drawbacks are eliminated.